Facsimile (fax) devices play an important role for everyday communication between businesses. Facsimile communications provide a swift and convenient medium for sending simple messages or transferring copies of documents. Nevertheless, facsimile communications do have their limitations.
For example, users have the option to send a cover letter when faxing a document to a destination. A destination means a communication address, such as a telephone number, to which a facsimile communication is directed. Currently, if a single fax is transmitted to more than one destination, and sending a cover letter is selected, the cover letter is generic for all the destinations. That is, the same cover letter is sent to all the recipients. Further, the cover sheet interface of current facsimile devices also provides users the option of entering comments. However, the comments, once entered, remain the same, regardless of the number of recipients, and are not customized for each recipient. This results in placing the same comment on all the cover letters corresponding to one job. This may, at times, result in an undesirable situation, such as accidentally sending the wrong comment to the wrong person.
Further, there are times when a fax is sent on the behalf of several people. Current user interfaces of facsimile devices also do not allow customizing the ‘From’ field in a way that names and designations, or any other relevant information, such as email or contact information, of individual senders may be reflected.
There is therefore a need for methods and systems that allow facsimile users to customize the various fields on the cover sheet, including comments, ‘To’ and ‘From’ fields, in accordance with the target recipients. It would also be desirable that the ability to customize the facsimile cover sheet transmitted from the common facsimile device is provided without requiring the users to employ software other than the software normally employed with the common facsimile device.